Tom Lowe, just put up some of his footage on Vimeo of the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.  The footage was shot with the RED Epic and these clips are part of Tom’s upcoming film, "Timescapes."   The footage is beautiful, and I’ve got to admit to becoming slightly addicted to the dubstep artist’s work (SKRILLEX is the artist btw)   I was impressed to see Tom getting these type of results in relatively low light at 96 fps and120 fps.  Tom was able to do this at a reltively low ISO (800 to 1000) because he had a secret weapon at his disposal:  the  Zeiss Master Prime cinema lenses, which open up to T1.3.   Not too shabby… 

We both had fun shooting with the Master Primes together last month at TimeFest.   Check out the video below for a glimpse of what we shot together with some very talented and quality people.  And stay tuned, because in a few days Tom Guillmette will be releasing a half hour documentary on the  inaugural TimeFest.

 CHOICE – Aaron Green’s Winning Edit:

CONGRATULATIONS to Aaron Green (@AaronKGreen) for winning the edit contest from Creative Live! Aaron has won over $3,000 in gear from Redrock Micro. 

For those of you who haven’t been following the events that led up to this, here’s a quick recap.   A few months ago I went to Creative Live and taught two courses over a weekend – one on how to shoot a documentary style portrait piece, and the second a narrative scene.   The goal was never really to put together a final edit – my focus was to make sure that the students in the classroom (that were being broadcast LIVE around the world to an internet audience) as well as the viewers learned as much as I could teach them in a day.  Nonetheless there was a huge demand to see the final edit – so we decided to put up a contest to see who could do the best job of putting these pieces together.   

100 submissions were submitted  (that can be viewed here on Vimeo) and I have to admit that it was very challenging to select a winner.  I was incredibly pleased to see as many entries as we did – and to see so many talented editors put in so much time, energy and creativity into these. It really was a pleasure to look through these and I think it spoke to just how important a part of the filmmaking process the editor is.   The best part (I would assume) would be for you to see us during the actual shoot on the course – and see how everything came together, and eventually resulted in these edits.

It was a very very difficult decision – but I ultimately chose Aaron Green’s entry. The edit spoke directly to the power of editing in my opinion – Aaron did a fantastic job of restructuring the scene and emphasizing the best part of each performance. Keep in mind that we never really intended for this to become part of a final edit – our main emphasis during the Creative Live workshop was what was happening BEHIND the cameras, and making sure both the students attending learned something, as well as the thousands that were watching. I knew this – and in fact warned the actors that they would be getting very few takes, and that they were going to be somewhat neglected relative to a normal production. Given these factors – and the fact that many of the students on the crew had never shot as a group, or on a narrative piece – there were definitely some spots that needed to be edited around – and I think Aaron did this very gracefully, and managed to keep me completely engaged – even after having seen this footage time after time again!

I also selected two runners up. Congratulations to Lawrence Meriwether and Donald Strubler! Watch their "Choice" edits below.

W7’s Choice – Laforet Edit Contest by Lawrence Meriwether:

donaldStrubler [CHOICE] laforet | creativeLive edit:@donaldStrubler

Thank you again to all of you who participated in this contest!

This sounded like such a good idea at first… but now even Gizmodo has picked up on this series of videos!   A few weeks ago Blake at Vimeo asked me to help him record some instructional videos on lenses and apertures and depth of field etc.   I told him that it’d been done SOOOO many times before… I didn’t want to do anything too booorrriiinnnggg…  we had to do something DIFFERENT…  and then out of that, these 3 videos resulted – check them out below or on the Vimeo page:  

Behind the Glass: An Introduction to Lenses from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Here’s a excerpt from the Vimeo page followed by the two other videos after the jump…

"Aperture:

The aperture is the diameter of the lens opening. The larger the diameter of the aperture, the more light reaches the film or image sensor. The aperture also performs a critical function for focus. As the aperture decreases in size, the background and foreground gain sharpness. This zone of sharpness is called the depth of field.



Aperture is expressed as F-stop and will be indicated on your camera in abbreviations that look like this: F2.8 or f/2.8. 

The "F" stands for the focal length of your lens, and the number indicates the diameter of the iris opening. (For a more in-depth explanation, head over to this lesson!)

Focus Ring

Located around the barrel of your lens, this helps you focus the image. Some lenses will also have an auto focus switch, which means that your lens can do the focusing for you on those days that your eyes are feeling a little tired. 

Prime or Fixed Lens vs Zoom Lens

A prime lens has a fixed focal length, whereas a zoom lens has a handy ring that allows you to switch to different lens equivalents within the single lens. But don’t knock prime lenses entirely! They may be less versatile than a zoom, but they often have superior optical quality, are lighter weight, smaller bulk and cheaper.

A Lens for Every Occasion!

Various lenses are suited for specific applications. Lets have a look at some common lenses and what they do.



16mm– An ultra wide lens, this bad boy distorts heavily, emphasizing objects in the foreground by making them look a lot larger than the background. Dynamic, but use with caution! 

28mm– Standard for documentary and photojournalism to shoot cowboy shots, otherwise known as medium shots. 

35mm– Another standard for documentary filming, also tight enough to shoot portraits.

50mm– Standard for cinema/video, it approximates the human eye’s typical focal length.

85mm– A popular portrait, or "beauty" lens. Capable of making everyone look lovely!

200mm– The top of the scale for most people, this is a telephoto lens. Their inherent shallow depth of field makes them useful in eliminating unwanted foreground and background objects by simply throwing them out of focus. Great for sports photography!



Now that we’ve had a friendly overview, let’s take a closer look at the wonders of focal length and what that means for your video. Onward to Episode 2!"   Click below to see more videos…

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